Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2016 January 6

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January 6

Does Kaufman v. McCaughtry apply to "Religion = Atheism" in Wikipedia infoboxes?

There is an RfC at Template talk:Infobox#RfC: Religion in infoboxes concerning what should be allowed in the religion entry in infoboxes. In the discussion section, someone wrote that "In the US atheism has been defined as a religion for governmental purposes, and, on that basis, for all practical purposes does not qualify as a 'nonreligion'."[1]

I believe that this is based upon this case:

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit. James J. KAUFMAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gary R. McCAUGHTRY, et al., Defendants-Appellees. No. 04-1914. Decided: August 19, 2005 ( http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1467028.html )

I have two questions.

First, is it worthwhile having a Wikipedia page on this legal decision?

Second, is this a valid argument for the purposes of the Wikipedia RfC in question?

I am really over my head on this one; an engineer trying to figure out legal questions is a lot like a typical lawyer trying to design a microprocessor... Any help would be most appreciated. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:45, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

All I can address is the pageworthy question. Most US federal court cases don't qualify for notability; anything decided by the Supreme Court does qualify, and there are a few others, but unless this one were appealed to the Supreme Court and got cert, you'd have to find plenty of legal citations to it, or plenty of non-legal coverage. Has it been heavily cited as persuasive precedent in other legal cases, and/or cited by legal scholars who aren't judges drafting opinions? Any significant appearances in stuff by individuals who aren't legal scholars? See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. for a good example of a notable case that didn't even get taken to the appeals court: despite not binding anyone except Corel and Bridgeman, it has a good deal of persuasive precedent (even getting cited by British lawyers writing about their own copyright law), and plenty of the coverage is from stuff that's not ivory-towers legal scholarship. Nyttend (talk) 14:32, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

In response to your first question, it probably passes WP:GNG because I can bet you there are a nice load of law review articles out there discussing the case in significant depth. First amendment cases, and establishment or free exercise ones especially, are always fun ones to write about. But whether it's worth writing an article about, I'm not so sure. Yes, it's a published opinion of an appeals court. But... I think my response to your second question might give you a better idea of why it's more of a "yeah, whatever" decision...

It's not really a helpful thing to throw into the argument because the case treats atheism as a religion in an arcane Establishment clause and Free Exercise clause sense, and not in the sense that you and I think of religion. The decision itself actually kind of hints at this: "The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a 'religion' for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, most recently in McCreary County, Ky. v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky. . . . . The Establishment Clause itself says only that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,' but the Court understands the reference to religion to include what it often calls 'nonreligion.'" 419 F.3d 678, 682. In short, for the purposes of the First Amendment, non-religion is religion... but you're not doing a First Amendment argument, you're talking about Wikipedia. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 14:40, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Copyright in the UK

My response to the immediately previous section made me wonder about stuff the Bridgeman v. Corel article cites from UK barrister Jonathan Rayner James, Q.C., in his writings about applicable copyright law in the UK. Do I understand rightly from Copyright law of the United Kingdom that everything's the same throughout the realm, rather than being a matter of Englandandwales, Scotland, and (Northern) Ireland? And if so, how did it become an exception to the pattern of separate legal systems for the former Three Kingdoms? The sources for James' writings are mostly solid-looking print sources, so while I trust that they've represented James well, they don't help me see his reasoning; the exception is [2], which is a solid-looking web source that doesn't address my question. I'm finding scattered other stuff, e.g. the US-published Copyright in England, but I wonder if that's merely an inaccuracy comparable to calling Elizabeth merely "Queen of England". Nyttend (talk) 15:01, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Most modern UK statutes are enacted for all of the jurisdictions, sometimes with specific allowances made for a particular jurisdiction (usually Scotland). Copyright is a creature of statute, and the statute having been rewritten relatively recently, it is no surprise that broadly the same rules apply across the jurisdictions. And the current statute does have some provisions that make minor allowances for different law or procedure in Scotland versus the other two - a word search for "Scotland" in the text of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 will show you what they are. For example, section 108(2) says: "For this purpose a person shall be treated as charged with an offence— (a) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, when he is orally charged or is served with a summons or indictment;(b) in Scotland, when he is cautioned, charged or served with a complaint or indictment". This is because criminal procedure in particular does differ between the jurisdictions, so allowance needs to be made for that.

In areas where the UK has some obligation to implement international treaties or EU law, that would be another reason to impose uniform laws across the jurisdictions. This applies to copyright: there are both international treaties and EU law that set perimeters for UK copyright law.

Unless there is a reason for the UK parliament to legislate differently for the different jurisdictions, you are only likely to get significantly different laws in matters for which the devolved legislatures are empowered to legislate, but copyright is not one of those. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:39, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

(ec) I don't know about copyright law (although a good starting point would probably be section 304 ("Extent") of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), but although the three jurisdictions have different legal systems, there are plenty of Acts of Parliament which extend (in whole or in part) to more than one. The legal systems (courts, rules of evidence and procedure, etc.) might be different, but to a certain extent (and until relatively recently, entirely) all are governed by the same Parliament, which sometimes legislates for one jurisdiction alone (the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 only applies in England and Wales, for example) and sometimes for two or all three at once. Proteus (Talk) 16:43, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I should add, however, that although the copyright law (for example) is the same in substance in England and in Scotland, lawyers are generally qualified in one or the other, so practising lawyers would still talk about copyright in English law or Scots law, rather than "UK law". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 16:48, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Donald Trump and foreign reporters?

I'm interested in any case of Trump dealing with foreign reporters, and in any description, analysis, commentary, etc. of the way Trump deals with them. Thanks for any data. Contact Basemetal here 16:01, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Can't Google produce enough hits for you?--Denidi (talk) 16:22, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I can't find anything. I Googled "Donald Trump Foreign Reporter" and I get nothing. These are the top three hits: [3], [4] and [5]. They have nothing to do with my query. And the other hits further down are even worse. In fact I couldn't find even one case even of an interaction between The Donald and a foreign reporter except this press conference that's got three of them. Since this was kind of interesting I tried to find out more (and commentaries about such cases). But Google doesn't help. I thought there could be knowledgeable editors here or just people who may have run into such cases by chance. Contact Basemetal here 16:58, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Try "Trump Mexican reporter", "Trump Canadian reporter", etc. [6], [7], [8]. 184.147.121.46 (talk) 17:40, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for those. I had tried some countries too ("French", "Russian", "English"). I'll try others. Even though I had tried "English" I did miss your 3rd reference which features an English woman. It's only the 12th hit, on the 2nd page, so I missed it. Thank you especially for that one. You took the trouble to check the 2nd page. Regarding your 1st and 2nd reference I would not consider Telemundo or Univision to be foreign news outlets. But thanks all the same. The press conference mentioned above had a Russian, a Frenchman and an Englishman, but a different English person than the one you gave me. One problem is that a lot of the stuff is video so unless there's a transcript or it's been mentioned elsewhere no Search Engine will find it. That's where editors who've ran into such an occurrence by accident can help. Contact Basemetal here 19:19, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

I have another objection to video. If I get a link to an hour long vid, I'm not going to watch that on the chance it might be relevant. If the links could at least index you to the relevant bit(s), then that would be an improvement. Let's hope Google adds this capability soon. StuRat (talk) 20:10, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Stu Is this an oblique criticism I didn't put the times that interaction with foreign reporters takes place in the link above? Contact Basemetal here 22:12, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Nope, didn't even look at those links. Of course, including the time index is always helpful (unless it's so short that people can view the entire video without inconvenience). StuRat (talk) 22:30, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

You might get some joy from "Scottish" given the Press coverage of Trump's wanting to create a golf course on the east coast of Scotland. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:44, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

• Do you think I might get more answers if I move this to the Entertainment Desk? Contact Basemetal here 22:12, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

It's not exactly clear what you are looking for, Basemetal. Jorge Ramos of Univision disrupted an orderly press conference, speaking out of turn to berate Trump as a racist. He was removed from the presser after he disrupted it the second time, and Trump said he'd be glad to answer any question Univision's anchor had if Ramos would simply obey the same ground rules as everyone else. This is so easy to find I am surprised you would need to be informed of it. Is there some other sort of issue you are looking for? Given this is a domestic primary, I am curious as to what sort of coverage the foreign press would be providing. μηδείς (talk) 04:26, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

This is a hilarious train wreck that gets plenty of foreign coverage. And of course you know that there's no such thing as an orderly anything if it involves Trump. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:43, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Precisely. The media love Trump. He got talked about a lot, even before he ran for president. Now it's pretty much the Trump quote of the day. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:04, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

Trump has been giving interviews for something like 30 years and has got businesses all over the world so there's got to be more than what I've found.

The Jorge Ramos incident is the second example supplied by 184.147.121.46 above and of course is well known. Of course I knew about it. Btw, it is not clear whether Telemundo and Univision are to be considered foreign news organizations. I didn't count them as such when I posted my question, so the Jorge Ramos thing was outside the scope of my query anyway. In the meantime I've found an interaction betwen Trump and a (real) Mexican journalist (at least it's a journalist who says he's "from Mexico" but doesn't give or I didn't catch the specific news outlet) but unfortunately it's more of the same. I think I've got by now a pretty good idea how an exchange between Trump and a Latino journalist whether American or Mexican will go.

So I'm particularly looking for Continental Europeans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese because Trump's reaction is bound to say something more interesting.

But Trump is not entirely predictable so you often need several iterations to figure him out.

Just to give an example, in the press conference I linked to above there were an English journalist (from the Guardian), a French journalist and a Russian journalist. He refuses to take a question from the French journalist. Why? If I can't find more interactions between Trump and French journalists I will never know if this was one specific journalist that got on his nerves or if he likes to diss French journalists in general or what. This is just an example.

Again: I'm looking for examples from the whole of Trump's career, not only from the campaign.

Also: descriptions, analyses, commentaries about the way Trump handles foreign journalists. Secondary sources if you will. Found nothing so far.

Contact Basemetal here 13:21, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

You are right, Basemetal, in so far as you consider Univision as not by definition foreign. I watched it frequently on cable until I cut the cord. The issue is the language and birth location of the anchors, not the ethnicity of the audience. I have (like my parents and nannies) spoken Spanish since I started speaking, although I am by blood a full gringo, and my parents spoke English between themselves, while my elder relatives spoke the Rusyn language. 02:38, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Who replaced Ri Chun-hee as the North Korean news anchor?

Googling "north korean news lady" (as I wanted to know who it was), I get Ri Chun-hee as a result, but reading the article, it says that she retired in January 2012. So, the question is, who replaced her? I ask after reading about the news that North Korea recently "tested" an H-bomb and saw clips of a female news anchor from North Korean TV. I can't find the answer anywhere. Thanks.  Seagull123  Φ  22:35, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Apparently she came out of retirement just to make that announcement: see here. Contact Basemetal here 22:42, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Thanks Basemetal!  Seagull123  Φ  23:14, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

But then again, who does the reporting for the state news TV at the other times?  Seagull123  Φ  23:21, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Here's a new anchor at the end of 2012 reading the same kind of announcement Ri Chun-hee used to read, in this case a rocket launch. The article says her name has not been released. Whether there was someone else between Ri Chun-hee and her and if the one featured in this article is still on the job now I don't know. There won't necessarily be ever again someone with the same iconic status as Ri Chun-hee. The very fact that Ri was brought back from retirement for this announcement seems to indicate that no one else can match her status and maybe no one ever will. In any case it is not easy to get information out of NK, and that's an understatement. Here's another article that may be of interest but it doesn't give any name. Contact Basemetal here 00:26, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

@Basemetal: Thanks!  Seagull123  Φ  18:46, 8 January 2016 (UTC)